I thought the problem was that small telcos did not want to go to 8-digit local numbers, which the common telco equipment of the time did not support.
Charles -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Paul Gilmartin Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2018 11:13 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Theology (was: Many arguments to a Rexx function call) On Wed, 11 Apr 2018 10:31:43 -0400, Phil Smith III wrote: > >And ISTR was one of the reasons for seven-digit phone numbers. Either >that or it was a happy accident, but I know I've read at least someone >claiming it was chosen because "seven is magic". How many of us >remember shorter numbers? I remember four-digit dialing when I was a >kid; my brother-in-law has that beat: his home phone number when he was little >was.4. Small town. > And I must dial (press?) 10 digits for even a local call. Politics. Merchants did not want to cede to their competitors the advantage of a more conveniently entered code. I recall two letters and five digits, and earlier two letters (the first two of a word) and four digits. An abbreviated word may be easier to remember than two arbitrary digits. But Telco gave up when they exhausted pronouncable digraphs. There's a similar scramble for memorable domain names (marginally NSFW): http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/dillon-edwards-investments/n11241 -- gil ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
